Sana will not be expelled. So decided the administrative court of Lille in a decision rendered on Friday May 3. This young woman, whose The world had painted the portrait, is a returnee from Syria, where she was taken against her will by her radicalized mother in 2014 to join the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) organization.
Forced married to a Belgian jihadist at the age of 15, she had two children there, who were repatriated at the same time as her to France, in January 2023. Sana – this is a first name loan intended to protect her identity – is one of the rare women repatriated from Syria not to have been indicted by French justice for terrorist criminal association.
This did not prevent the former prefect of the North, Georges-François Leclerc, from deciding to expel her to Algeria, where she never lived or stayed, for “serious threat to public order”. The expulsion order – justified according to the prefecture by the continuation of contacts with other returnees from Syria and the fact that Sana had contracted a religious marriage online with a German jihadist – was accompanied by house arrest. The young woman, now 25 years old, was also accused of not having condemned the actions of IS.
“Desire for integration for her daughters and for herself”
“If she did not expressly condemn the terrorist organization with which she lived for several years, she has, on numerous occasions, distanced herself and expressed her hostility towards her original environment and this period of his life »argues the judgment of the administrative court, that The world was able to consult.
Sana does not deny having contracted a “religious digital wedding” during her internment in a camp guarded by Kurdish forces in 2019, in northeast Syria, but she explains that she did so to obtain financial aid when she had no “nothing left to eat” and to escape judgment before a “Islamic court”as his mother, who remained radicalized, threatened.
Sana also does not deny having friendly relations with another young woman repatriated from Syria, but “this person is not, any more than she, indicted by an anti-terrorism judge”underlines the court, which adds that Sana demonstrated “her desire for social and professional integration in France, for her daughters and for herself”.
The administrative court further considers that the expulsion decision violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which stipulates that “Everyone has the right to respect for their private and family life”. On the other hand, he does not grant Sana’s request to obtain a residence permit, her mother having refused to apply for French nationality when she was a minor.